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Sunday, 31 December 2017

As some of you know or by now have guessed, I have written two series, one the Eden Paradox, a science fiction series, and the other a spy thriller series, under the name J F Kirwan. Having finished both series, the question I find both my 'halves' being asked, is what next?

Well, as with everything about writers, rather than a simple answer, there's a story. When I finished the Eden series with Eden's Endgame, I was pretty exhausted. That series started as a short story back in 2003 (called Trouble in Eden), which by 2008 was a manuscript, and it got published (The Eden Paradox) in 2011. But let's backtrack just a moment, because in 2008 I almost got a deal for the book with HarperCollins in the US, but although their SF editor in chief loved it, it didn't make it through the committee that makes the financial decisions (at 164,000 words it was deemed too long to be financially viable for a first book). Then came the financial crash, when everything in publishing went south, so it took a few more years for it to come out via an indie publisher. But after that I produced a book each year until Endgame, when I was done, although I confess I have considered one day writing a sequel or a prequel...

I wanted a short sabbatical from SF, to work on characterisation, and I'd had two serious back operations that had stopped me from scuba-diving, my other passion, so as an exercise I started writing a thriller with scenes borrowed from some of my scarier diving moments. It was just for fun, but I sent it out and took it to a writers conference, where it got roundly hammered. Nevertheless, I put in all the reviewers' suggestions, even one I thought was wrong and completely off-beam, and sent it out again, and got it accepted by... HarperCollins. Not only that, they wanted a three-book deal. Guess what I said?

But by now I'd started another science fiction story (I don't sleep, you know that if you read my blogs), titled 'When the Children Come', which was meant to be a prequel to a short story I wrote (actually intended as a tribute to Iain Banks) called Executive Decision. I was already a third of the way through the book when the deal with HC came through, and so I had to shelve the fledgling novel.

So, to cut a long story short, I'm going to finish the 'Children' book before I do anything else. The premise is pretty dark, and it's single protagonist, so we get to see everything through the eyes of Nathan, a damaged American war veteran who did one too many tours in Afghanistan. It's intended to be a trilogy: When the children come, When the children return, and After the children. As with Eden, it is as much about us as it is about aliens, and about a possible dark future pathway for humanity. Set today, it will include some of the darkness already on our planet, from child soldiers to racial tensions and hatred, that could be our undoing. But there will always be a spark of hope, because that is why I write.

Does this mean the thrillers are now on hold? Probably not for long, but as the saying goes, and as Nathan does in the end, I'm going to put the children first.

Saturday, 12 August 2017

One of my favourite scenes from the Eden Paradox is the following, where Blake and Pierre have finally made it to the new planet, Eden, and realize they are not alone. They are tracking an alien they've not seen up close yet, looking for its nest so they can steal an egg for study, but are about to get a lot more than they bargained for...

Blake skidded to a
stop in front of Pierre and held out his arm. Pierre managed to stop just in
time, on the edge of a precipice, as they entered a cathedral-like chamber. Sharp
cracks stabbed the silence, as small rocks they had just pushed over the edge tumbled
to the bottom, landing within a couple of seconds. Tardy, deeper echoes told
him the vastness of this subterranean cavity, the torch beams dissipating
hopelessly in the dark void. Blake put down his rifle and extracted a stubby
pistol from his backpack. He lifted his arm and fired a magnesium spike flare upwards
into the middle of the cavern. It found purchase in the massive domed ceiling,
illuminating the cavern in a ghoulish twilight.

Pierre looked down below, across the plain stretching
out before them. "Eggs," he said, a hollow feeling in his stomach;
eggs, as far as he could see. But they had been cruelly misled by the Hohash
image. It was almost a joke. Steal an egg, they’d decided. As if they could put
one in their rucksacks. Pierre recalled that when Blake had seen the Hohash
image, there had been no frame of reference. He gazed at the nearest row. Each
egg was twice the height and width of a man.

He switched into scientist mode, to
allay the welling-up of fear. He cleared his throat. "They must hatch
fully grown. Makes ecological sense for a predator."

Blake crouched on the solid-rock floor,
and tossed a pebble over the side of the small cliff. He pulled out a navcon from
his backpack and swept the surrounding area, before the light from the flare
dimmed. When it sputtered and died, it felt worse to Pierre – not seeing the
silent arrays of eggs, yet knowing they were there.

"The navcon has ninety-five per
cent of the image," Blake said.

They both retrieved and donned their
goggles, and switched off their torches, plunging themselves into abyssal
darkness. Pierre flicked a switch on his goggles and instantly could see pretty
much what he’d been able to see in the fullness of the flare a minute before,
whichever way he moved or turned his head. Pierre recalled this gadget had come
close to getting the Nobel Tech prize. He reckoned it should have won.

He activated his transponder, so the navcon could map their
relative positions and overlay them onto the recorded scene, stopping them from
bumping into each other. Peering over the edge again, he saw the eggs – large
and rugged-looking, sitting upright. Of course he was seeing where they were, and
was assuming – hoping – that nothing was moving down there.

Pierre heard Blake remove his
goggles briefly, so he did too, flicking his torch on.

"Motion sensor," Blake said,
lobbing a small device back into the tunnel behind them. He then took out a
self-burying eye-bolt, placed it on the rocky floor, touched the two-second
primer, and stood back. With a sound like an underwater gunshot, it fired itself
into the stone with a reassuring thud. He attached the auto-feed wire system to
the eyebolt via a karabiner and replaced his goggles.

"Wait twenty seconds, then
follow."

He swung himself smoothly over the
edge and abseiled down.

Pierre counted to twenty, attached
his own auto-descent system to the wire, and replaced his goggles. He backed
toward the edge. He thought he heard something, a distant rumbling, coming from
the entrance. Uselessly, he looked toward it, but of course the goggles could
show no movement. He leant back, bent his knees, and kicked off, propelling
himself away and down the cliff-face.

A shrill electronic whine, rising in
tone, made him misjudge his descent, and his knees smashed into the cliff face,
stinging with pain – the motion detector had sensed something approaching,
fast. The whine was drowned out by the creature’s roar, and it felt to Pierre
as if the whole chamber vibrated. He pressed the freefall button on his harness
and dropped faster, but was suddenly yanked upwards. Pebble-sized rocks
pummelled his head and shoulders.

"Cut the line!" Blake
shouted from below.

In disbelief Pierre looked upward
and saw nothing, then raked his goggles down and managed to switch on his torch
– the creature was hauling him up. He could see its trapezoidal head, the blood
red breathing slits writhing on its black-blue face. The creature’s roar made
Pierre’s hands freeze, clinging to the cord.

"Pierre! CUT – THE – LINE!"

He rose rapidly in jerks, a metre at
a time, the creature’s forelegs feverishly pulling up the line, like a spider
reeling in a fly. Pierre could hardly breathe, as his right hand flailed behind
him groping for the knife. His head bashed against the cliff face knocking his
torch from his left hand as he tried to protect himself. He knew he had only a
few more seconds. His outstretched right hand fingers brushed across the hilt
and he gripped it with all his might. Another yank pulled him up almost to the
ledge. With a yell not far short of a scream, he whipped the knife above his
head and severed the line, feeling a gust of air as a claw lashed past his
face. He freefell, hurling the knife sideways so he could lock his elbows
around his neck and head, the creature’s howl of fury chasing him as he tumbled
into the darkness below.

You can purchase the Eden Paradox here, along with the other three books in the series.